Case Study only - not research

Dear Tom, approximately 20 years ago I met a man who had suffered terribly at the hands of the Nazi's in a camp where they did medical/psychological experiments. He refused to hurt others and so they tortured him. His one arm was completely wasted away and the one side of his body was crippled - he used a walking stick and walking was difficult for him. He mentioned only the above and did not mention more of the trauma he had suffered. I did not push him for information naturally. He appeared not to have had any difficulties other than post traumatic stress syndrome and depression, which he fought off without taking any legal or illegal substances. He was working in the humanities sector and had devoted his life to the rights of individuals and counselling. When he retired he continued to work unofficially in these areas and never stopped fighting his depression through natural means, such as social contact, exercise, caring for others and diet. He had an exceptionally strong belief system and was religious as well. He never really 'retired' and his family had been decimated during the holocaust, and his only surviving family member was dying of cancer, however though he was depressed, his belief systems appeared to be the anchor to which he held fast. I remember it well, as he is possibly one of the bravest people I have ever had the privilege of meeting and working with.

I hypothesized at the time that what had prevented him from abusing substances was a combination of factors, a strong belief system and a high level of education and intelligence, as well as the ability to channel his emotions in a positive way.

although dont have any experience on that level either having met anybody from that regimen only have seen movies or read books like exodus  but very recently watched a very moving movie where a lady helps her father hide a jew in their house for the sake of humanity as her father and the boys father had been in army and had given him an accordion and this girl goes and steals books from a german family andher interaction with this very ill jewish boy who hs to be kept hidden at alltimes is  very nice and he gifts her a blank diary saying in thdre culture words have a lot of meaning to commu icate to humanity and says this is for you to fill every day teaching her new english words the way her father used to teach her in basement and describes to her the meaning of memory as in aristotles words it is what gets engraved in soul and asks her to give her description of weather and elaborate on words like it is ple ,further sun looks likean oyster and he could visualize in a closed arena and how she helps his not getting caught on surprise check of basement and finally her stepmother who had been totally against kdeeping qalso gwets attachedto thestranger and gets transformed by this soul and once he recovers he decides to leave not putting the family in moretrouble -while all her family dies in a bomb raid  she continues writing books passing on to next generations and grand children and dies at age 90 and movie and book ends bymax coming back saying nobody lives for ever or can do so but it issuch soyuls which give it a meaning and she had written how can human beings behave the way they o and max ends by saying humans haunt me-i have gone beyond your question but this book sold millions of copies and movie was an os car nominee moving millionsof hearts so i thought will share although this max continues to do good work and this girla germa left alone dedicates her life for humanbeings. and anothermovie reader where kate winstlet refuses to get a jewish boy endangered after falling in love with a 15yr boy but gets imprisond and is later prosecuted by jews for not saving burning jews although it is not her who has signed orders as she nebver knew how to read and write,just not toget this boy implcated she takes it onherself and dies in jail.

Dear Cheryl and Kulvinder,

Both of you are wonderful people and I am blessed for having met you in such weird circumstances. I say "weird" because what are the chances that we would meet in person or even on the internet? But we have one thing in common which probably helped: we love our brains (not kidding), meaning that intellectual work and ideas/philosophical exchanges are our brains' nutrients, so somewhere in the stars it was written that we should meet. 

I am a strong believer that coincidences are more then just probability lotteries. I believe in a Supreme Being, Creator of the Universe, thus I believe in providence. By far I am not a religious bigot, but still I follow the commandments that belong to all religions and rule them.

That said, many, many thanks for sharing these two touching stories. If I am not mistaken, the film that you saw Kulvinder is "The book thief." I saw it too and was impressed as you were.

But let me tell you that the story of Holocaust is full of such extraordinary people who, despite all risks, helped the Jews to escape the Nazi madness. Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, which I visited many times, grants to such people the title of "Righteous Among the Nations" and there are thousands of them.

Coming back to my question, I finished publishing my book about the Holocaust in Slovakia in 2 volumes 900 pages altogether). One of the chapters is dedicated to these kind souls, so now I am trying to figure out what will be my next title and work. The question I posed seems to be a possibility for a new research.

There is one thing that I can tell you links most Holocaust survivors: they all had and still have a great inner strength that helped them to survive one day at a time. It happened to me too, on days with great hungering, and I never despaired. Possibly the origin of this lies partly in the instinct of survival, but also in the fact that in general Jews maintain a very intense spiritual life.

If I ever undertake a new project of writing a book (this last one took me over 7 years to finish) I will use your input and comments as a reference.

Be well and may our Creator bless you and your homes with health and peace.

Tom

its great to know that you wrote a book regarding these jews who suffered in thes haNDS OF THE GERMANS ,rthere was another movie i watched where tm vruise goes and act as a minister o hitler and tries to get revenge within the hitler employment just unable to recalthe movie and yes i remenmbered the movie schindlers men regarding survivos od these camps and all hitlers men how these people are workig under schindler but somehow this fellows inner man gets awoken and foe jews hew puts his life at risk and geta thenm out after paying heavy amounts of bribes to theae fat germans to get the jewas out and saves a lort odf lives and yes it was a book thief which i was referring to  and fust have seen many more invaolving gretapo hut do not recall right now.

One has to be careful about labels, there were many good germans at that time, such as Schindler. However,  the impact of Hitler and the Nazi's on the german psyche at the time is a very complicated subject, which has been researched a great deal. I met a simple German family who I lived with for a short while whilst there and the old gentleman (who I tried to ask questions) who had been in that war, who had been forced to participate was as emotionally scarred as the gentleman I met who had been in the camp. 

Dear Cheryl,

You are right about the dangers of labeling people, since this is generalization which we Jews are very familiar with and caused thousands of pogroms, including the Holocaust. However, in regard to the Germans of that time and other nationals in countries which collaborated with Hitler, I have a personal opinion which may diverge from other people with whom I maintained similar debate.

Here it is in short:

The question  is: were ALL Germans (and Fascists in other countries) who supported the Nazi regime also criminals as was Hitler and all the fanatic Nazis who surrounded him? My answer is “No” because of the label “criminal,” which infers that all of them were murderers. Clearly a number of those people did not kill or helped to kill Jews and other undesirables of the Nazi regime.

But then, were those collaborators or supporters of the Nazi racial ideology and Hitler's ultra-nationalistic-xenophobe policy responsible for the Holocaust? Here my answer is a sound “Yes.”

I explain: when tyrants such as Hitler, Stalin, Nero, Assad, or more recently, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (ISIL), etc, etc, were/are convinced that a large group of their fellow countrymen support(ed) them, then their mad plans of annihilating enemies, minorities and/or undesirables becomes feasible and easy to carry out because they do not expect resistance – meaning the risk of failing is absolutely minimized.

Consider this: at the beginning of WWII France joined the Allies and fought the Nazis. But with the "Blitzkrieg" strategy of quickly conquering lands with huge armies and heavy armament involved, France was forced to capitulate in mid 1940. Then suddenly, Marshal Petain, a hero in WWI, turned coats and became a Nazi collaborator. Until the liberation of France in mid 1944, Hitler and the Wehrmacht saw no resistance at the Western front, fighting only against the beleaguered Britons. Great Britain almost lost the war because of that simple episode.

This explains why for us Jews, the Nazis’ crimes do not prescribe and never will. Using the same reasoning, the responsibility of those who supported the Nazi regime, no matter their nationality and even if they did not participated in the genocide, has to be assigned to them and will never expire. Past and future now become connected.

Be well

Tom

What you say is right Tom, but as time passes, it is hoped that the future generations on both sides are not made to pay for the history of the past. The scars of the past will remain in many different forms, and dealing with those will remain as a constant reminder of the horrors that can be brought upon people when governments and  mass psyche collectively determine the outcomes of others.

Dear Cheryl, although we could discuss the above for long, not wishing to turn away from my original question, let me just say that I have the unpleasant feeling that Europe is at the brink of a very similar situation as with Hitler in 1938. The generations are different, players (brutes) changed, but the behavior of the European policy-makers, attempting to avoid a new war of huge proportions, is exactly the same: appeasement at any cost.

The best

Tom

WELL HOWSOVER BAD THE PAST BE the supreme soul says forget it and move in the future and forgiving them is actually forgiving yourself AS ONLY ONCE YOU LET IT GO YOU CAN NEVER GET THE SCARS REMOVED and live today the way you shoulod be living-you thing this isis lADER BAGDHADI WILL NOT MEET HIA FATE SHIVBABA SAYS ALLTHESEBOMBS MADE BY SCIENCE WILL BE USED FOR MANS DESTRUCTION ONLY SO WHY LAMENT OVER THE PAST .

Thank you Kulvinder for your explanation of how Hinduism treats forgiveness. Judaism, however, has a quite different conception about forgiveness: NOT even Adonai (we are forbidden to pronounce G-d's true name) can or will forgive a person who caused harm to an other. On Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement, the most important holiday in Judaism) all Jews pray asking for Adonai's forgiveness and begging him to inscribe the offender in His Book of Life. According to our sages, Adonai will always forgive, since He is infinitely Benevolent, but He may not inscribe the sinner in the Book of Life because dying is a normal human event (it is in the Old Testament: "from ashes you came, to ashes you will return.").

However, if a person who harmed another person sincerely and honestly apologizes to the wronged individual and tries to rectify the wrong, the wronged individual is religiously required to grant forgiveness.

In other words, in Judaism not even G-d can grant forgiveness, rather true forgiveness must come jointly with sincere repentance from the harmer/offender and he/she asking for it from the offended person. Only then can both person move on, as both have followed Adonai's Commandments.

This is a simplified explanation, but the basic teaching in it is that when somebody sinned or harmed, he/she can only truly be forgiven if asking for forgiveness and rectifying the wrong, and even so, he/she depends on the harmed person's decision that the rectification was adequate, thus allows forgiving, and to comply with the Commandments.

although i cant change your belief system basically i believe in one supreme soul or god whatever we choose and rest i believe are just offshoots of religion -it is not the question of your or my god but we allare souls having a common father in the supreme soul or paramatma  and it seems he is on earth to change the kalyug to install so called heavenor paradise whatsoever yu choose to call it and according to his teachings soul keeps on taking rebirths and it is the karmic account which it carres forward with it being immortal alt5hugh body is mortal and he teaches best is to forgive or ignore people doing wrongdoings and just look at the hans which only goes for pearls and leaves away stones -cant recallwhat you call hans in english -in anycase over 8000 centres of brahmkumari ishwariya vishwavidhyalya have been installed by the incorporeal shivbaba and to get peace in world irrespective ofr religion of anybody,rich or poor,color caste creed etc.

Dear Kulvinder, we belong to different cultures, have different habits and embrace different beliefs, but I am sure one thing unites us: we respect our mutual diversities. What I wrote was just to underline that despite professing different  religions, we congregate around similar conceptions of universal peace and fraternity. With yours and Cheryl's permission, I would like to return to my original question, hoping that other colleagues will join us. Maybe you both can help my with literature. Thank you in advance. Tom

well i am always ready to help of whatever help i can be althogh the little knowledge i have in your field.

They should be treated like any other post traumentic stress disorder patients.

Thank you George for your interesting view.

Nevertheless, my question does focus the problems with survivors, exactly because those who are still alive are aged and most likely very depressed.

All the best and a Merry Xmas

Tom